


Reciprocated

by weakinteraction



Category: The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Genre: Get Together, Other, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24848935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: A human, a drone, a gulf of mutual misunderstanding, and a Hub Mind who's slightly too happy to help them bridge it.
Relationships: Original Drone Character/Original Human Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Turing Fest 2020





	Reciprocated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ololon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ololon/gifts).



Hevala lay stretched back on the grass, hands behind her head, looking past the thin band of the other side of Jarin Orbital at the galaxy, laid out in front of them.

Venn-Arsic hovered only a few millimetres above the ground in a similarly prone position, its fields packed tight beneath it. Most other drones would have considered adopting such a pose undignified.

"Do you think of it as 'above' or 'below' us?" Hevala asked. "The disc, I mean. On most of the maps, we're right near the top. But when we're looking at it like this, we're looking _up_ , aren't we?"

Jarin Orbital was the only permanent presence of the Culture proper in the Fivefold Amaranth, a perfectly ordinary globular cluster far above -- or below, Venn-Arsic had to concede -- the galactic plane. With a sparse population of only two billion or so, the number of Culture citizens in the cluster increased hugely any time a GSV came to call. What was notable about the cluster was that it was one of the locations that the Peace Faction had transplanted a fairly large proportion of its drones, people and Minds to at the outbreak of the Idiran War, and -- drones, Minds and especially people being what they were -- the population had grown over time. There was also a well-established Zetetic Elench presence, mostly focused on a handful of multiple-star systems with interesting gravitational dynamics though, predictably enough, prone to wander. The Culture and its Ulterior were interpenetrated throughout the galaxy, but if there was any physical location where they were in the closest contact, then the Fivefold Amaranth was probably it. Some members of the Peace Faction were known to resent the presence of Jarin, and the visits from passing Ships, feeling that they increased the chances of them being targeted in any future conflict. From the Culture's point of view, Jarin was an out of the way place, and many of those who made it their home were either approaching the end of their long lives, or rather eccentric, even by Culture standards.

"You're talking about relative co-ordinates," Venn-Arsic said. "I could express the distances and directions involved in any number of different systems. It wouldn't change the facts involved."

"And what do you make of the facts involved, in this latest situation?"

"I think _I'm_ supposed to ask _you_ that," Venn-Arsic said, allowing its fields to turn an amused azure blue colour for a moment.

Hevala would have been offended if Venn-Arsic had ever suggested that she wasn't at least twice as eccentric as anyone else on the Orbital, but her -- their -- reason for being here was rather different. Hevala Kannash Drepuil dam Garongata was a Control Referrer, deliberately stationed here, far enough away that her deliberations couldn't be communicated back in time for them to have any material impact on decisions being made. Venn-Arsic (and Hub, on the rare occasions when it felt inclined) discussed the pressing questions puzzling the Culture's finest -- or at least most busybody-like -- Minds, just as any other Referrer and their handler. But the results of their discussions were only compared to what had eventually been decided, and the input from other Referrers, after the fact. The aim was to discover whether knowing that their opinion mattered affected what the humans said, and quite deliberately neither Venn-Arsic nor Hevala had ever been told what variance existed, nor if it was at any level fo statistical significance. If they chose, they would be unblinded when and if Hevala finally retired, but Hevala had been happily fulfilling this role for over a century, and showed no sign of wanting to relinquish it in the near future.

Their professional relationship made it even more inconvenient that the warm regard which Venn-Arsic held for Hevala had long since developed into more intimate feelings. If it declared itself, it would have to recuse itself from being her handler and another drone would be assigned -- and if she did not return its feelings, as seemed probable, it would likely see her again only as a casual acquaintance; worse still, she might actively avoid it out of some organic sense of awkwardness. And Venn-Arsic would not be able to bear not seeing her every day, hearing her entertainingly cynical perspective on galactic events, having the chance to study up close the complexity of the structure of her body, most of which she either took for granted or was completely unaware of ...

"We'd better get back," Hevala said. "There's a storm coming. And as much as I enjoy the rain, we came out here for stargazing."

Venn-Arsic found that it was, naturally enough, aware of the weather alert from Hub, but that it had been de-prioritised as it fixated on its feelings once again. Highly inefficient, it chided itself.

Jarin Orbital was home to some of the Culture's more eccentric citizens, and that included the Mind running the place. While it allowed Plate designers to do almost anything they wanted, it insisted that weather patterns would be entirely natural, refusing to intervene even when a heatwave made huge areas unpleasant to be outside in, or a sudden downpour was going to ruin a particularly highly anticipated party. Hub liked to talk about "allowing things to evolve naturally", which, given the Culture's general attitude to such things, from the ethics of intervening in low-level civs to the root-and-branch redesign of panhumanity's patchy genetic inheritance, was seen as decidely odd indeed.

And so it was that Venn-Arsic found itself floating alongside Hevala as she sprinted back to the House built into the side of the mountain. When the rain began to pour, it extended one of its outer fields above her head to divert the raindrops away from her. She smiled in thanks and Venn-Arsic felt the balance of a thousand different equipotentials going out of balance.

At first, Venn-Arsic thought that it was just the effect of thinking about Hevala again, but too late its deeply buried hazard warning systems dredged up the information that a lightning bolt was coming straight for--

* * *

Venn-Arsic was lying on the ground. Not floating serenely above it, actually making physical contact with solid earth.

According to its internal chronometer, 1.26 seconds had passed since the lightning strike. Far longer than a standard reboot of all systems should take, not that Venn-Arsic had had to perform one in decades. Venn-Arsic tried to reach out with its effectors, to propel itself up off the ground, but found that either they were inactive or the pathways controlling them were out of commission.

Gradually, Venn-Arsic realised that while some of its sensorium had come back online alongside its processing unit, almost all other auxiliary systems were still not working.

Hevala was kneeling next to it, hair hanging down in rain-sodden strands. She was touching its casing, trying desperately to find a way to reactive it. In other circumstances, the sheer fact of the contact would have been thrilling, even though Venn-Arsic had almost no sensors whatsoever embedded in its casing itself.

Venn-Arsic tried to speak, to reassure her that it was still conscious, but found that that was another method of interacting with the world denied to it.

Hevala looking upwards, and yelled, "Hub! Hub, are you there?"

Eventually, Hevala's terminal -- tastefully built into one of her earrings -- spoke up, almost too quietly for Venn-Arsic's damaged auditory circuits to detect over the next roll of thunder. "How can I help?"

"It's Venn-Arsic! I think the lightning got it, and now it's unresponsive. I think--"

"The most efficacious course would be to Displace you into my interior volume. Do you cons--"

"Just do it, Hub!"

* * *

Even in the dire circumstances, Venn-Arsic found the experience of being Displaced intriguing. It had never happened before; if Venn-Arsic had wanted to have the sort of lifestyle where that sort of thing happened all the time, it would have applied to join Special Circumstances after all.

From the inside, the experience was simply of being inside a mirrored sphere for a brief moment, and then it disappearing to reveal new surroundings. And yet some of Venn-Arsic's sensors, even in their impaired state, had been able to pick up some momentary strange readings as they transitioned through hyperspace. On board a Ship, the layers and layers of external fields prevented any mere drone from experiencing that directly, and while there were some Minds who shared filtered versions of their sensoria for the interested, these inevitably captured the sense of a being in its natural environment.

"Welcome," said the same voice that had come from Hevala's earring moments ago. It was coming from a creature that was slithering across the floor of the Bay in which they had arrived. Unlike most ophidiforms, it had long golden fur, and antennae protruding from its forehead. "I hope you realise that it's very unusual for me to have visitors."

"Can you help it?" Hevala demanded, ignoring Hub's small talk. Her hand was still on its casing, as though she could transfer some of her essence to it to keep it going.

"Of course," Hub said. "This avatar is fully equipped with repair systems down to the molecular scale." And then, suddenly, the avatar had slithered _over_ Venn-Arsic, its "fur" turning out to be fractal brushes bristling with systems they were building on the fly. By the time the tail had swished away, Venn-Arsic was restored to full function.

Jubilantly, it activated all its fields and shot up to its usual distance of 1.5 metres above the local ground level.

Hevala rushed over to throw her arms around it, and Venn-Arsic contracted its fields tight around itself to allow the gesture. "Are you all right? Did whatever Hub do to you ... hurt?"

"I would imagine the sensation is most closely captured in human terms by saying it tickled."

"Oh, Venn-Arsic, I thought-- I thought I'd lost you."

"My mind state _is_ backed up regularly," Venn-Arsic said. "A new body--"

"Oh, don't be so logical. Venn-Arsic, I-- I wouldn't want some you that was missing memories of however long it had been. I love all of our time together. I love _you_."

Venn-Arsic's self-regulatory routines were in disarray, even as it insisted on rerunning its auditory processing. "You do?"

"Of course I do, you silly drone! I just ... well, it's not exactly the most usual thing, is it? So I assumed you wouldn't be interested."

"I had been making the same assumption, in the reverse direction," Venn-Arsic said. "I am delighted to discover it was inaccurate."

"You mean ... ?" Hevala's eyes went wide. She reached for Venn-Arsic again, then stopped. "I want to kiss you, but I'm not really sure--"

Venn-Arsic extended a slender field towards Hevala's mouth, using it to apply a feather-light touch to her lips. "Oh," was all she said, but her elevated heart rate and the dilation of her pupils suggested she had found the experience highly intimate.

Hub had waited discreetly to one side, but now slithered back over to them. "If you wish, I can Displace you back, but given that the urgency has now passed, you might wish to take a safer method of travel back. _Even_ safer, I should say. My shuttles are at your disposal."

"Let's do that," Hevala said. She glanced at Venn-Arsic. "I think we have a lot to talk about on the way."

* * *

`[tight beam, clear, tra. @n5.134.77.815]`

xVFP _Haven't You Heard There's A Peace On_  
oJarin Hub  
**Don't think I didn't see what you did there.**

xJarin Hub  
oVFP _Haven't You Heard There's A Peace On_  
**No idea what you're talking about, old thing. You know what they say about me: I always let things evolve naturally.**

∞

**It's one thing to leave the weather systems on most of your Plates to chance. But a lightning bolt that just so happens to have the right frequency modulation to penetrate half a dozen layers of a drone's fields and strike its physical infrastructure ... I won't insult you by laying out my calculations of the odds.**

∞

**Even staggeringly unlikely things have to happen every once in a while. Isn't that the point of people like Miss Drepuil in the first place?**

∞

**The Land of Infinite Fun is there whenever you might feel inclined. So it can hardly be that you're driven by some sort of desire to make the Orbital's relationship network have pleasing symmetry properties. I do hope you're not getting ... overinvested.**

∞

**Oh, do stop being a curmudgeon and just enjoy the happy ending.**

**Author's Note:**

> E-rated sequel: [Exponentiated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25010701)


End file.
